Off in the mist, half-glimpsed round corners and across hazy squares, there were stranger shapes still, their hoots and warbles echoing down the wooden alleyways. Monsters and giants. Made Shivers’ palms itch, thinking of the way the Feared rose out of the mist up at Dunbrec, bringing death with him. These were just silly bastards on stilts, of course, but still. You put a mask on a person, something weird happens. Changes the way they act along with the way they look. Sometimes they don’t seem like people at all no more, but something else.

Shivers wouldn’t have liked the flavour of it even if they hadn’t been planning murder. Felt like the city was built on the borders of hell and devils were spilling out into the streets, mixing with the everyday and no one acting like there was much special about it. He had to keep reminding himself that, of all the strange and dangerous-seeming crowds, his was much the strangest and most dangerous they were likely to happen across. If there were devils in the city, he was one of the worst. Wasn’t actually that comforting a thought, once it’d taken root.

“This way, my friends!” Cosca led them across a square planted with four clammy, leafless trees and a building loomed up from the gloom—a large wooden building on three sides of a courtyard. The same building that had been sitting on the kitchen table at the warehouse the last few days. Four well-armed guards were frowning around a gate of iron bars, and Cosca sprang smartly up the steps towards them, heels clicking. “A fine morning to you, gentlemen!”

“Cardotti’s is closed today,” the nearest growled back, “and tonight too.”

“Not to us.” Cosca took in the mismatched troupe with a sweep of his cane. “We are the entertainers for this evening’s private function, selected and hired especially for the purpose by Prince Ario’s consort, Carlot dan Eider. Now open that gate quick sharp, we have a great deal of preparation to attend to. In we come, my children, and don’t dally! People must be entertained!”

The yard was bigger’n Shivers had been expecting, and a lot more of a disappointment too, since this was supposed to be the best brothel in the world. A stretch of mossy cobbles with a couple of rickety tables and chairs, painted in flaking gilt. Lines were strung from upstairs windows, sheets flapping sluggishly as they dried. A set of wine-barrels were badly stacked in one corner. A bent old man was sweeping with a worn-out broom, a fat woman was giving what might’ve been some underwear a right thrashing on a washboard. Three skinny women sat about a table, bored. One had an open book in her hand. Another frowned at her nails as she worked ’em with a file. The last slouched in her chair, watching the entertainers file in while she blew smoke from a little clay chagga pipe.

Cosca sighed. “There’s nothing more mundane, or less arousing, than a whorehouse in the daytime, eh?”